


The Farthest Roads

by whereismygarden



Category: Stargate Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Canon Compliant, Drabble Collection, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-11-03
Updated: 2016-12-18
Packaged: 2018-04-29 17:40:39
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 10,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5136767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/whereismygarden/pseuds/whereismygarden
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Collection of Stargate: Universe drabbles and short fics.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Alley

                Rush had spent all his cash on five measly drinks, which was a sad commentary on the state of his finances. He was just on the edge of buzzed, having given one of the drinks to a smiling, pretty fellow postdoc who’d been reabsorbed into a group of other women in the midst of a conversation on modeling biological systems. He’d been intending to follow up with asking for her number, but that hadn’t happened. It was barely dark outside when he left the bar, and he started on his way back to his house.

                He was deep in thought, still preoccupied with his conversation with Sara: her descriptions of parameters within her system were still rattling around in his brain. He was considering variations on weighting her characters, working through the conceptual framework of it all, when he turned into the alley between 4th and Spencer and someone shoved him in the shoulder.

                “Empty your wallet,” a deep voice growled. He turned to see a broad figure in his path: a man with a hat pulled low over his forehead. There was no gun in his hand.

                “I don’t think so,” Rush said, walking forward, and the man caught him by the shoulder.

                “Don’t act brave, just hand it over,” he said grimly, and Rush jerked his shoulder out of the man’s grasp.

                “Fuck off,” he snapped, mind sharpening as his eyes cast over the ground. A truly disappointing lack of bottles. The only knife he carried these days was a small one on his keyring, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to get into anything serious with this guy, who was bigger than him and probably more sober.

                “Come on, man,” he said, and Rush kicked out clumsily as the other man shoved him hard against the wall of a building. “Dammit!” The man’s weight fell against him for a second, driving him against the wall. He jabbed out with his elbow, and a heavy hand clamped around it.

                “What are you gonna do?” Rush sneered. He had scrapped with his fair share of muggers back home, in Glasgow and at Oxford. This man’s attitude wasn’t sharp enough, cold enough, for him to really worry. A second later, he was reconsidering his flippancy, because there was a snicking sound and a faintly glinting blade being brandished.

                “Wallet,” the man ground out.

                “Are you prepared to use that?” he panted out, almost relishing the flood of adrenaline that was coursing through him. It had been a long time. Most men weren’t up to pressing the blade down, and he doubted this one was. His intense dark eyes were too involved, too careful, too busy hiding his fear.

                “God, what is wrong with you?” the man said, shaking him, making his head knock against the wall a bit.

                “I have no money,” Rush said. “But you could really use a lesson in holding your knife.”

                His robber didn’t let go of him, but the knife lowered slightly.

                “What the fuck,” he said softly.

                “It’s not like I’ve never been robbed,” Rush said disdainfully. “Fuck off, will you? And invest in a god damn bandanna, you’re a fucking embarrassment to your profession.”

                “Robbery isn’t my profession,” he said, hand loosening.

                “That’s probably good, you’re terrible,” he said. He squinted at the man: he was in his early twenties at most. “You should get another job. Join the fucking army before you get arrested. Young fellow like you, lots of opportunity.”

                “Yeah,” the robber said, putting his knife away. He sounded rueful, amused, angry all at once. “If you don’t have any money, get lost.”

                Rush continued on his way, heart racing, tensed up in case the man decided to jump on him from behind. He would hear him coming, and even tipsy, he could run pretty fast. He could still throw a good punch.

                He was almost disappointed when nothing happened.


	2. Surety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This chapter: Rush/Telford.

“That’s the last time we do that.”

Everyone is crawling up the walls, waiting for him to finish. Waiting for him to deliver on the secrets of the universe, unlock whatever city lay behind the stubborn empty circle of the stargate. The soldiers don’t come by the labs and offices very often, but they like to lurk around the gate if they have nothing to do. And they have nothing to do.

Someone should have thought of that before sending a bunch of adrenaline junkies to sit waiting on a desolate planet. But they had been so sure that this problem would be cracked quickly. That was bad planning, no room for contingencies, but he didn’t expect better, even on a top secret base on another planet, because every institution is run by the same inefficient bureaucrats. But at least he has a promising project to work on here. Even as it drags on and the other scientists slump and flag, he doesn’t stop. He doesn’t mind the pressure, except that it gives him headaches and makes it even harder to sleep.

He picks up on the fact that half the soldiers are shagging each other and the other half are shagging the civilians only gradually. Dr. Park is certainly giving herself free rein, and the other young ones probably are as well. He lets it go with a roll of his eyes. As long as they’re still focused when he needs them.

The worst of the adrenaline junkies is Colonel Telford. The man’s not the base commander, that’s Colonel Young, but he’s the mission leader. He’s taken it upon himself to inform Rush that he needs to be more cooperative, less combative, with the others. It’s rich, coming from a man whose polite, political veneer is so thin over the impatient, greedy nature underneath that it’s barely there.

“Do you ever think that your team of experts, with long experience at Stargate Command, would be more productive if you treated them better?”

“I would be more productive if you let me do my job in peace,” he says, not looking up from the code he’s typing. He’s remodeling the problem, again.

“Since you won’t listen to HR, maybe you’ll listen to me when I say that if you’re this aggressive, I’ll take you off the mission. This is a team effort.” The Air Force, always prattling on about teamwork.

“It would be a team effort if I had a decent team,” he mutters, entering another parameter. Telford moves closer: Rush can feel his black-clad presence, like a lurking wolf, press intimidatingly close.

“Young tells me you don’t do anything but work on the problem,” he says.

“That’s a good thing,” Rush retorts, not liking the way his heartrate is jumping up, his hands suddenly shaky with energy. Telford is far too close. He stops typing, curls his right hand into a fist.

“Normally I’d tell you to go to the rec room to let off steam, but I don’t think you will.” His hand closes tight over Rush’s shoulder, slides down across his chest.

“What the hell are you doing?” He stands up, jerks his shoulders, shoves Telford off. “Get off me.”

“Are you sure?” Telford is eyeing him darkly, arms crossed.

~

Telford never lets go of his hair, when they’re in bed, and he grabs Rush’s arms so hard that he leaves bruises. For his part, Rush knows that the colonel’s shoulders are scored all over with nail marks under his uniform.

“That’s the last time we do this,” he says, again, after showing up at the colonel’s quarters, again, and Telford just shrugs his shirt back on and looks at him.

“Are you sure?” is all he ever says to that, and Rush always is. Because he’s not making faster progress on the gate address, and he’s not less stressed, and Telford is still insisting that he cooperate better with everyone. Whatever happened to there being perks to having sex with your co-workers?

But surety is among the things that don’t seem to matter much at Icarus.


	3. Quarantine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I wrote this before I wrote "Quarantine," one of my other fics. This was kind of the first draft, before I realized I wanted to go in an entirely different direction. I was also struggling with the justification for putting them in quarantine: not scientifically probable, please forgive me.
> 
> But I found the document and it's not bad as itself, so I thought I'd post it here, since it is an AU.

                Rush sighed and jotted down another note into his booklet. This month was shaping up to be more hectic than anticipated. Another paper to review: a lot of population genetics in this one, which made him want to turn it down, but his old expertise followed him around like a baby animal: making a mess and distracting him, mostly. No students had showed up to his office hours, thankfully, though that would change in a week when they remembered they had a final.

                Someone knocked on his door.

                “Yes,” he said, and it opened, Eli coming in and closing it behind him, a conspiratorial look on his face.

                “So, Ron’s going to be here in about fifteen minutes,” he said, grinning. “So you should come into the lab if you want to actually see what happens.” Rush sighed. He had begrudgingly agreed that Lisa Park’s boyfriend could in fact surprise her here to propose, though why the man couldn’t take her to dinner and do it there was a mystery to him. It probably involved Eli’s desire to photograph the whole thing.

                “Right,” he said. “I’ll be right in.” Eli nodded.

                “I’ll text you.”

                He did text Rush, in twelve minutes, just as he was piling some things on his desks into stacks. He did kind of want to see Lisa’s face. She was the best postdoc he’d had in a while.

                “Ron” was a lighter-skinned black man with a strong jaw and a very short haircut, and was accompanied by a man about Rush’s age, with swept-back black curls. Ron and Eli were huddled outside the lab door, and the other man noticed him first and nudged Ron in the side.

                “Thanks for letting me do this, Doc,” Ron said, offering his hand. Rush, unsettled at being addressed as ‘Doc,’ took a moment to register it, and by then the handshake was odd. He caught the look Eli shot the young man, and rolled his eyes at Eli’s need to make a face every time a social nicety slipped by him. It wasn’t that often, after all. Eli’s camera whirred to life, and Rush preceded them all into the lab, snapping gloves on and making a pretext of checking his cultures. Lisa was busy at her bench, checking well plates and writing in her notebook.

                “Dr. Park,” Eli said, and Lisa turned to her left, looking past Rush to Ron and Eli.

                “Ron!” she said, and he stepped forward, pulling a simple beige box out of his pocket and getting down on one knee. Rush smiled internally at the sight of Lisa stripping off her gloves and shoving them into the disposal bin, so that she could press her fingers to her mouth. “Oh my god.”

                “Lisa,” he said earnestly, taking the lid from the box. “Will you marry me?” Lisa nodded vigorously, while the rest of the lab crowded behind Brody’s bench across from her, watching without any sense of decorum.

                “Yes, yes,” she said, catching his hand and pulling him to his feet. Then she was putting the ring on, while Chloe and Ginn materialized from somewhere to exclaim over it, Volker lurked in the background (no doubt heartbroken but putting on a good face), Franklin shook Ron’s hand, Brody continued pipetting after a quiet ‘congratulations,’ and Eli continued to film. The other man was standing back and to the side, and presumably was there to offer some sort of moral support to Lisa’s new fiancé.

                “So Lisa and Ron have been together for two years now,” Eli was saying as he walked slowly towards them.

                “Eli, I think it’s better to record what people are saying instead of doing a voiceover,” Chloe said earnestly. Brody murmured in agreement.

                “Well, that comment isn’t making it into the final cut,” Eli groused. “I’m just trying to get a feel for the beats of it.” He waved a hand, and knocked a plastic box on the edge of the bench to the floor, where it opened, spilling out something that shattered with an unmistakeable noise that cut through conversation. Rush turned his eyes to see broken Pyrex and light brown BGM.

                “Shit,” Eli said, turning. “That was, uh,” he covered his mouth and nose with a hand. “That was the mutant _Cryptococcus_ from the CDC.” His voice was very quiet and somber.

                Rush knew that, because he had foolishly set it on the bench, safe inside its box. He was never allowing visitors in his lab again.

                “No one move,” he snapped, looking at the mess of media and glass that was currently spattered all over his shoes and legs and those of Ron’s friend. “That’s containment broken.” He looked Brody, who was already reaching to the top of the bench shelf and taking down a container of ethanol. “Eli, put that on the bench and slide it toward me.”

                He unscrewed the lid with a steady hand. There was no reason to panic, because the likelihood of there being inhalable spores in the air was statistically low. He poured the ethanol carefully over the wreckage of the Petri dish, then shook each leg one at a time, getting bits off. To his credit, the other man hadn’t moved at all.

                “Brody, go press the alarm.”

                The shrill, repetitive alarm was fucking annoying, and made it hard to talk, but it was necessary. “Clear out and get in the showers, there’s nothing on you.” Ginn had taken the biohazard spill kit from the wall, and passed over two masks and the bleach and ethanol from inside, as well as another jar of ethanol. Then the rest of them were heading out the other door. Rush pulled one of the masks on and handed the other to the man.

                “I’m Everett Young,” he said evenly. “Am I about to die?”

                “No,” Rush said, crouching to start pouring the 50% bleach all over his jeans and shoes. “Precautions. This is the remains of a sample of _Cryptococcus neoformans_ from the CDC, which we were analyzing. I highly doubt it has sporulated, and even if it has, the likelihood of us breathing any in is very low.”

                “But not zero,” Everett Young said. “Clearly.” There was a dryness in his voice, but at least he wasn’t panicking.

                “Well, no, but I’m not worried.” He was pissed about his shoes, actually. “Hope you’re not too fond of your trousers, because I’m about to bleach the hell out of them.”

                “So what’s this cryptas stuff?”

                “ _Cryptococcus,_ ” Rush corrected, not wanting to answer. “A fungal pathogen.”

                “You’re filling me with confidence, Dr. Rush.” Definitely sarcastic. He could handle it then.

                “It can cause meningitis in immunocompromised people. But this was a mutant strain, that we were going to evaluate for pathogenicity.” He took the opportunity to lean over and pour a third of the bleach over the spots of media on his pant legs and shoes. The rest of it, back onto the floor with the dish. He dumped a lot of paper towels atop the whole mess: there was no reason to get bleach and ethanol all over the floor.

                “Great,” he did sound a little tense, now.

                “I told you I wasn’t worried.” The benefit of working in a government lab materialized in the form of the masked and suited cleanup crew, who came with a labeled red bag and dustpan.

                “This is worrying,” he said, pointing to the cleanup crew.

                “Better safe than sorry,” Rush said, feeling very sorry indeed. He was going to get in serious trouble over leaving that on the bench, covered or no. He pulled on a pair of gloves, taking the box off the bench and offering it to Young. “Take your shoes off, then step back towards the door. Then get another pair of gloves, do the same with your jeans and socks.”

                “Are you serious?” Instead of answering, Rush unknotted the laces of his shoes, stepping out of them and backwards, shedding the gloves and pulling on a second pair. He pulled his belt off and set it coiled on his bench, atop his lab notebook, before continuing with his whitening jeans and socks, till he was standing at the lab door in his boxers. Young slowly did the same, leaving behind a rather nice pair of shoes, and then his jeans as well.

                “Showers at the end of the hallway,” he said, and thanked God that everyone else was confined to their labs, so he could at least walk down the hallway without being stared at too much. The floor felt odd under his bare feet, and he felt anxiety creeping into his back and chest as he hurried to the showers, which were already full of steam, most likely due to the fact that the rest of the lab had come in to wash.

                “So you have showers for the express purpose of cleaning up after you accidentally expose yourselves to deadly diseases?” Young pulled off his shirt, looking at the stacked, wrapped bars of soap at the entrance to the stalls. Rush took one, and handed him another, pulling his mask off and shoving it into the red bin at the door.

                “Yes,” he said, and went into the first stall, shutting it behind him. He left his shirt and boxers on the bench. Hopefully no one would insist on burning them. He had only ever needed to use the showers once before, and they were hot and high pressure. He soaped his hair, then moved onto the rest of his body, hearing the stall next to him turn on.

                The cleanup crew better not be trashing his lab. It was extremely obvious what the problem was, and it was all on the floor. As it was, experiments had been abandoned on the benches over the incident. He rinsed off, trying not to grind his teeth in rage, and stepped out of the shower, trying to remember where anyone left the towels.

                There was a pile of them on a table near the exit, and he got one round his waist just as Young came out of the shower, shaking his hair like a dog. He looked away from the man, picking up another towel and facing the wall as he dried.

                He stuck his head out of the exit to find Eli standing there, looking apologetic through a face mask.

                “Hey, Fraiser’s demanded the two of you stay in twenty four hour quarantine.” He offered Rush a stack of clothes. Judging by what he was wearing, it was scrubs and t-shirts. “Since you came in contact.”

                “You lot make sure the lab isn’t a wreck. And salvage as many experiments as possible. The cleanup should be done by now.”

                “Right,” Eli said mournfully. “Have fun in quarantine.” Rush narrowed his eyes at the young man, who backed off. Rush pulled on the t-shirt from the top of the pile, which smelled reassuringly of detergent despite the fact that it had been obviously donated used by some Metallica fan.

                “Did I hear that correctly?” Young said, shrugging on a much better t-shirt, plain grey, after a search through the stack. “We’re in quarantine?”

                “You’re taking this pretty well, actually,” Rush said, thinking it over for a moment as he pulled on the black scrub pants from the pile, which were still a little long on him. “What is your profession?”

                “I’m retired military.” Well, that explained his placid acceptance of orders and procedure.

                “You don’t look old enough to retire.”

                “Thanks,” Young said, amused, though Rush had not been complimenting him. No doubt he knew. Again, he had found better-fitting clothes in the scrub pile, though in honesty Rush had no desire to wear gym shorts.

                Quarantine was a small room with a couch, a cot, and a counter behind the sealing door. Rush opened the cabinet under the counter and sighed. An electric skillet, a great deal of canned vegetables, a bottle of olive oil, boxes of protein bars, and gallons of drinking water.

                “Great,” he said, and wished that someone had thought to leave a goddamn book in quarantine. Some disposable paperback, or old copies of journals, to be read and discarded.

                Young sat down on the couch, leaning his head back.

                Rush ate a protein bar and drank some water, mentally going through his list of things to do. He had that paper to review, he now had a huge incident report to write and sign and probably a seminar to attend about not being a careless idiot, and a final to write. That on top of everything else he had to do on a weekly and daily basis. And here he was, with nothing to do.

                “Will you hand me one of those bar things?” Young said. He tossed him one, and Young caught it easily. “And please sit down, you’re making me nervous with the drumming of the fingers and everything.” He glared at the man, who stared back impassively. “You don’t have to lie to make me feel better. If we are likely to get sick and die, tell me.” Rush gaped for a second, then stalked over to the couch and sat.

                “That’s not what I’m stressed about,” he said. “We’re fine. I have a lot of work to do.”

                “Get some sleep,” Young said, demolishing the bar. He dropped the wrapper into the wastebin and opened another jug of water. Rush, distracted from his mental to-do list, watched him as he stood by the counter and drank. He had a nice profile, quite a nice body too, set off by his choice of used clothing.

                He looked away before he could get caught noticing, and concentrated on organizing his current project internally.

                “Do people actually cook in here?” Young held up a can of water chestnuts and the olive oil. Rush snorted.

                “No way. I suspect the canned goods are a front for leaving the oil.”

                “Why?” Young sounded baffled.

                “Usually it’s just individuals in here, with nothing to do and lots of time to kill,” he said. Young let out a quiet laugh.

                “That can’t be sanitary,” he said. Rush studied the ceiling.

                “I don’t think anyone’s had to be in quarantine for over a year,” he said.

                “That’s not comforting to me,” Young replied, and Rush heard him take another drink.

                “Yes,” he agreed, not feeling conversational. He drummed his fingers against the arm of the couch, till Young sat down next to him.

                “So how long have you been here?”

                “Ten years,” he said.

                “And what do you study? Ron couldn’t quite tell me.”

                “Fungal infections in immunocompromised people,” he said. Young hmmed quietly.

                “Wow. How do you get into that?”

                “My wife got sick during chemo, eleven years ago,” he said, not sure why he was sharing this. He hardly ever told anyone. But the isolation of this room made it surprisingly easy to say. Young didn’t say anything next to him for a moment.

                “That’s a good reason,” he said finally.

                “Yeah. Let’s not talk about it,” he said.

                After what felt like hours ticked by, but had actually been fifteen minutes according to the clock on the wall, Rush had to stand and pace.

                “Are you going to be like this the whole time?” Young asked, in such a carefully patient tone that Rush bristled instantly.

                “Yes,” he snapped. He hated being still. And he was tired of sitting next to Young, who was too warm and frankly, too unclothed. Granted, lab members wore short sleeves all the time, but he didn’t notice, against his will, the shape of their torsos underneath, the breadth of their shoulders. And he never had to look at anyone’s muscled thighs and calves, or their bare feet. He turned his mind carefully away. The last thing he needed in this empty room was a hard-on.

                Now that he had thought about it, though, it could not be banished for more than a few thoughts at a time: even when he thought about exam questions, his accidental isolation partner’s looks slipped into his mind. What would those shoulders feel like under his hands? What kind of strength was really in those heavy thighs?

                God, this was impossible. He looked over at the clock and almost groaned aloud. Less than ten minutes. He was going to have a serious problem if he couldn’t calm down, but he had nothing to distract himself with, nothing to do. He paced around the room, drank some water, and sat down again, this time on the cot, away from Young. The man’s eyes were on him, though, and he crossed his legs, closed his eyes, and put his hands loosely in his lap. With any luck he would look lost in thought, or meditation.

                Luck was not on his side, though, because closing his eyes just encouraged his imagination, and a few minutes later, Young cleared his throat meaningfully. Rush snapped his eyes open.

                “What?” he growled.

                “Are you okay?” Young stood up, tilted his head to the side. “You look kind of flushed. Do they need to send in any antibiotics?”

                “No, they do not. I am not sick.” He might possibly prefer a nice case of meningitis, actually, instead of the hardening between his legs. He tried to think of something horrible to deter his hard-on, but after being long denied (he wasn’t sure exactly how long it had been since Mandy Perry had finished her postdoc in Dr. Carter’s lab, but that had been years ago, and that was the last time he’d had sex) his body wasn’t backing down when he couldn’t offer his brain anything better.

                “You just don’t look so great,” Young said, coming forward. “Your breathing is all messed up, and—oh.”

                If he hadn’t been flushed before, he certainly was now. The loose scrubs, even in black, did little to hide his embarrassment.

                “Right,” he snapped. “Now that I’ve been humiliated, would you like to go back to the couch and not talk to me for the rest of our twenty three hours and twenty minutes together?”

                “Not really,” he replied, and Rush turned to glare at him. He looked somewhat uncomfortable, and then Rush felt his breath catch in his throat as Young reached a hand down and cupped himself. Christ. He was half-hard in the shorts, and Rush could feel the flush moving down his body till it felt like he was on fire. Young coughed softly and shrugged. “I have a thing for smart guys who are also type A jerks, actually.”

                “I see,” Rush said, still feeling humiliated but more turned on than before. He wasn’t sure what to say or do.

                “So,” Young said. “What’s your first name, then?”

                “Nick,” he said, reflexively.

                “Well, Nick, would you like to fuck me or should I fuck you?”

                “I beg your pardon?” he stammered, blinking at Young, who had spoken calmly and looked calm.

                “If you don’t want to, that’s fine, or if you want something else, that’s fine,” he said gruffly, still with that same calm air, as if they were talking about something mundane, as if Rush couldn’t see that he was all the way hard now.

                “I mean,” he said, trying to collect himself, move from containing his arousal to the possibility of having it satisfied. Well then. Yes. He looked at Young’s broad frame, felt his hands itch to get around his cock. “I guess, since we have so long, there’s no reason we can’t do multiple things.” Young sat down next to him, and the cot creaked a little. Rush couldn’t care, though, because the other man’s hand was sliding over his thigh, then between his legs to hold his cock through his pants.

                “What do you want first?” he said, lowly, right into Rush’s ear. He shuddered, worked a hand into Young’s lap and stuck his hand into his shorts, wrapping his fingers around hard, hot flesh. Christ, he was thick. Rush was so hard he doubted he could last long, and that decided him.

                “Suck me, then fuck me,” he said, and Young hissed in his ear, a hint of a whine in the sound.

                “Get on the couch,” he said, and stood up quickly, back to the cabinet and the much-discussed bottle of olive oil. Rush walked to the couch, sat down, and untied the waist of the pants, pulling them down to his knees.

                “Nice,” Young said, setting the bottle on the couch and getting on his knees without hesitation. Rush swallowed and clenched his fingers into fists, looking up at the ceiling.

                “It’s been, well, a while,” he said, and twitched as Young put his hands on his thighs, stroking. He felt like he could come at any second.

                “Don’t worry,” Young said, his voice earnest, and gave Rush’s cock an appreciative look. “I do like your dick, quite a lot.”

                “If say that, I’m going to come before your mouth even touches it,” he gritted out, and moaned as Young bent down and took him without pause. Fuck, that was good. He concentrated on dispersal rates of insect-vectored diseases versus mammal-vectored ones, and managed to stave off his orgasm. Fuck, Young’s mouth was hot and silky and his tongue was rubbing along the bottom of Rush’s cock and his tip was pressing into the soft flesh of his throat.

                Young lifted his head slowly, pulling his mouth off Rush and ending with an obscene, slurping kiss on the tip of his cock.

                “Fuck,” he said, finding all other words had deserted him. Young smiled, lips wet and face a little red himself. Then he bent his head down again, licked Rush from root to tip, wrapped his hand around his cock while he licked at Rush’s balls. “Oh my god, don’t stop.” Fuck, the man’s tongue was amazing, flickering over the base of his cock and rubbing over each of his balls.

                “Don’t stop?” Young said, voice deep. “I can’t deepthroat you and lick your testicles at the same time, you know.” His breath gusted against Rush’s skin, and he grabbed his thigh very tightly to avoid grabbing Young’s damp curls.

                “Forget I said a thing,” he said raggedly, trying to sound amused but failing miserably. Then, god, Young’s mouth was on him against, and he was doing his absolute best not to thrust up into his mouth, because he hadn’t been joking about deepthroating. Fuck, he had never felt like this before: the man was doing unspeakable things to him, his tongue was _everywhere_ , and Rush couldn’t help but thrust up occasionally, seizing onto his hair. Young just kept going, and then Rush was coming, hips jerking against Young’s hands while he whimpered into the crook of his arm.

                “Oh god,” he said weakly, coming back to himself after who knew how long. Young was still on his knees, between his legs, a hungry, pleased expression on his face. “That was—“ he waved a hand.

                “Words fail you, huh?” Young smiled, but the hunger in his face was more intent, and he reached forward to grab the bottle of oil, cracking the seal. Rush swallowed, in anticipation and a bit of trepidation. He kicked his pants all the way off, and then leaned forward to kiss Young. He was worried he might pull away, but the urge to kiss him was very strong suddenly.

                He didn’t pull away, just teased Rush for a few minutes, getting off his knees and onto the couch, pulling Rush into his lap, putting his hands under his t-shirt. Rush squirmed against his erection, making Young groan and tug at his shirt.

                “Take this off,” he said, and Rush allowed it to be pulled off and tossed aside, and his glasses carefully put on the ground behind the couch. “There,” Young said, and kissed him again, rougher, with a lot of tongue. Rush could taste his own semen, faintly, and then Young’s hands were rubbing over his arse. He twitched despite himself, as his hands moved to the backs of his thighs and then up his back. Young pulled away from the kiss and looked at him carefully.

                “When’s the last time you did this?”

                “I said it’s been a few years—“

                “You didn’t actually, but I meant, fucked up the ass.” Young’s vulgar turn of phrase just sounded hot, and Rush shivered.

                “Well, technically,” he stopped.

                “Technically?”

                “At least fifteen years.” Young gusted out a sigh. “It’s fine,” he kissed him again.

                “I don’t want to hurt you,” he sighed, and Rush picked up the bottle and put it in Young’s hand.

                “Come on, I said fuck me.” He wanted it. The thought was exhilarating, frightening in a way that made him want it more.

                “Oh, sure then.” He undid the cap, and Rush watched him spill some over his fingers, rub them together, spreading it. Then Young’s fingers were at his entrance, rubbing, and one finger pushing inside.

                “God,” he said, surging forward despite himself, away from Young’s hand.

                “Here,” Young said. “Bring your knees up to your chest.” It was an awkward position, but he was stiller, this way, as Young moved his finger in and out, slowly. He let out a slight keen through his teeth at the intimacy of it, someone’s finger up his ass, and then it was two, and more oil, and God, this was hard. His body was opening up, slowly, under Young’s hands, but there was an ache, a stretching that he couldn’t imagine could go further. He knew it could, but it didn’t feel like he could.

                Then the fingers hit his prostate and made him moan raggedly, and Young hissed in satisfaction, rubbing faster, hitting it every time. Three fingers, god, he was full to bursting, and curled up as he was, he could see Young’s erection, and he had felt it. His cock was going to take more.

                “I’m going to add another finger,” Young said, and did it, slowly, making Rush hiss and groan.

                “Just fuck me already,” he said, feeling sweat drench his back. “I assume you want to use your cock.” Young made a hmm sound and took his fingers out. Then he reached down between his legs, pulled his cock out of his shorts.

                “Turn around, I don’t think I can get a good angle with you on your back,” he said, and poured the oil into his palm, smiling a little as Rush watched him slick himself up. He bit his lip, and then turned, grabbing the arm of the couch and putting one leg on the floor.

                Young didn’t wait, pushing up inside him, thick and solid and _god,_ it hurt a little but he was being fucked into the _floor_ , Young’s hands on his hips. Fuck he wished he could see Young doing this, but he reached a hand back and got a hand on his thigh, squeezing as Young rocked into him.

                “This feels fucking amazing,” he said, and then Young was plastered over him, chest rubbing against his back.

                “You have no idea how goddamn tight you are,” he gritted out, and Rush shivered.

                “Oh, I think I can feel it,” he said breathlessly, and Young thrust into him, turning his remark into a groan.

                It wasn’t long before Young came, suddenly thrusting fast and shallow, and he could feel come filling him up. It wasn’t the best thing he’d ever felt, but there was a certain filthy satisfaction to it, and he just shrugged as Young groaned, “Sorry,” into his back.

                Young pulled out slowly, which hurt a little, and got a paper towel. No doubt there was come running down his legs. Rush could barely care, and he sank back down against the couch, catching his breath.

                “That was good,” he said. Young snorted.

                “Are you feeling a little calmer?”

                “I think so,” he said.


	4. The Bridge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> What do you do with a whole lot of resentment and UST? If you're Rush, use it as a tool...
> 
> A little AU circa season 2 episode 3, "Awakening."

            It was getting harder for Rush to sneak away to the bridge. Even with Young distracted to uselessness over TJ and Telford, he wasn’t a complete idiot. A coward and a wreck and a killer, but not a complete idiot. The slavish loyalty Greer and Scott and James showed him, despite his obvious failures to live up to the Air Force’s own standards of behavior, indicated that once he had to have been a stronger man. Though, from what Rush could tell, Young’s lieutenants and sergeant weren’t capable of much adherence to those standards either. The whole military complement was people not meant for the Icarus mission, burnouts and hotheads.

 

            And they were still in charge. This time, he wasn’t making the mistake of involving Camile and his team in taking control. He wasn’t making the mistake of even appearing to take power. The bridge was his, and once it was properly controlled, then he could pretend to share it. Destiny herself wasn’t sure if that wasn’t the best plan: if the ship could poke around in his head enough to project the voice and face of his dead wife before his senses, it could do more. Unless there were certain limits the Ancients had set upon it, like the interlocking layers of code that guarded full control of the bridge.

 

            It was getting harder to sneak away, with the result that he came at night, when Scott was either sequestered away with Chloe, or stewing in his own guilt and anxiety, or whatever else the lad did. This made him tired and overworked, nastier to his team, but everyone was miserable and exhausted, and it didn’t show much. Young shouted down the radio at him, but what could he do? Rush didn’t respect his authority. It was a petty, vicious little satisfaction he got from ignoring Young, but it was something when he was going toe-to-toe with Destiny and getting nothing but bad memories and the specter of Gloria’s disdain.

 

            Maybe that was why Young nearly caught him. The wall had just closed, and Young came round the beveled corner of the corridor, stopping short at the sight of him. Rush glared back, the blood-boiling mixture of outrage and fear and spite and contempt he felt for Young bubbling up like a spitting pot of oil. It was never less: he would never run out of rage for Young, somehow.

 

            “What are you doing over here?” Young asked, suspicion narrowing his deep-set, hollow-looking eyes. Eyes like a bull terrier, about to sink its teeth in and never let go.

 

            “I was, ah, looking over the lights, to see if there are any damaged conduits that are leaking power,” Rush said, gesturing down the corridor.

 

            Young’s upper lip curled very slightly, and he bit it back into his humorless smile, the one that made him look like some gorilla, baring its teeth in a grin. Rush felt himself tense up, move his weight onto the balls of his feet. Just in case.

 

            “You can’t say a single sentence to me without lying, can you?” he said, stalking forward, too relaxed. Too close to where the door mechanism was hidden, unlocked. Rush stepped forward in turn, chest turning cold. He was still afraid of Young, and he hated it, hated that someone as broken-down as Young could still beat him, defeat him, when there was nothing between them.

 

            “You haven’t spent much effort making me want to trust you,” Rush returned, looking him in the eye. He would _not_ back up. Not until Young touched him.

           

            Young grimaced like he wanted to say something but forced it down.

 

            “What are you doing?” he repeated. No, this was not good. He couldn’t have Young poking around and finding the bridge. Not now. He clenched his hands into fists, the swooping, spreading blend of anger and fear in his stomach making him cold and hot. He was at least not tired anymore.

 

            Rush reached up and grabbed Young by the back of the neck, rising up onto his toes and kissing him hard.

 

            Young jerked back, throwing Rush’s arm off. His expression was shocked, eyebrows halfway between drawn together in rage and raised in dismay.

 

            “What the _fuck_ , Rush?!” he said, voice oddly hollowed out. Too shocked to shout.

 

            Now he had to commit. He hadn’t thought this through. Well, he hadn’t thought at all, just acted, sensing his way to knowing this would work. He closed on Young again, grabbing him by the arm, kissing him again. It wasn’t completely revolting: the slight rasp of Young’s stubble and his unresponsiveness kept it from being too wet, too intimate. Part of him was exulting at wrong-footing Young, outmatching him physically. Young stepped back, hands grabbing at his wrists, pushing him away again. Rush pushed against his hands for a moment. Young shook his head as if he was trying to clear his vision.

 

            “What are you _doing_?” he growled out, holding Rush at half an arm’s length.

 

            “Come on,” Rush said, slipping deeper into the role. This was an easy lie to tell. It felt half true, ringing through him like the beginnings of a solution to a puzzle, like the gate locking in the first chevron. “You know you want it.” He made it sound as angry and assured as he could. There was a small thread of humiliation growing inside his gut. Even knowing Young wouldn’t tell anyone, even knowing the man would be off-kilter over being approached, he didn’t want the bruised feeling of being rejected.

 

            “You think you know what I want?” Young sounded aggravated, angry again. Rush reached out and put a hand on his arm, left it there.

 

            “You don’t want another person?” he said, reaching into the fetid well of loneliness and pain that Destiny had been filling for hours, drawing out a weapon and a lure. “You aren’t burning and dying from the weight out here?” He asked it with an edge, because he knew Young was.

 

            “And I’d take you?” Young’s flat tone was not encouraging, or it wouldn’t have been were he actually interested in pursuing the man.

 

            “Apparently not,” he said, and walked the way Young had come, jostling him with his shoulder as he passed.

 

            “Rush!” Young’s grip on his arm was inescapable. Rush found himself turned back to face the colonel, who still looked confused.

 

            “I don’t have all day to stand here talking to you,” he hissed.

 

            “Oh, no. Don’t even pretend that didn’t happen.” Young put his arm across Rush’s chest, shoved him against the wall. Rush wet his lips. He didn’t think Young would get violent over this: not his style, not with the open secret that was his sexual history. Though maybe men that had the urge to sleep around were that hyper-macho type, and that was half the world’s militaries, he supposed. The half that weren’t philanderers were bent, if you went by the movies.

 

            “Let go of me,” he gritted out. He had forgotten, again, just how strong Young was. The colonel was not even trying, and his arm was like an iron bar across Rush’s chest and upper arms.

 

            “Are you trying to catch me in something?” Young sneered. “We’re a billion light years away from Earth, and that’s the one thing Wray will never back you on to get rid of me.”

 

            Rush blinked. He had forgotten it was illegal to be queer in the U.S. military, or something like that.

 

            “Make up your mind or let me go, colonel,” he said. “I’m not trying to catch you in anything.”

 

            Young didn’t let him go, just leaned forward, till his face was quite close to Rush’s, curious. Rush felt his heart speed up for the third or fourth time in the last five minutes, as Young’s eyes moved from his mouth to his eyes and back, dark brows slightly quirked, face still and brooding-boar as ever. He was breathing slowly through his nose, and was close enough that Rush could feel each heavy exhale.

 

            “You’re a strange man,” Young said finally. “I can’t tell what you want.” He was still pressing Rush against the wall. Then he abruptly dropped his arm, but didn’t back away. His eyes were still searching Rush’s face, almost hopeful. He leaned slightly closer, and Rush felt the bottom of his stomach drop out. He leaned forward to meet Young again, and this time Young met him with a harsh kiss, a pair of strong hands on his arms.

 

            Rush’s fear was sizzling out, replaced with a lapping wave of real lust: the shock of a warm body against his, a hand reaching through his hair, and the taste of Young’s rough, bruising lips were waking up buried longing. He closed his eyes, tugged Young closer, and ignored the strangling, sickening blend of guilt and relief in his throat and stomach. He didn’t want to look Young in his half-trusting, unbalanced eyes, so he kept his closed, reminded himself how it felt to be knocked unconscious by the man, that Young had strangled his body to save someone else, that Young had ordered TJ to cut out the tracker in his chest against his will.

 

            Now the kiss, in all its new, real heat, was too intimate, too wet and sloppy, a high price to pay for the secret of the bridge. Rush broke it off, panting into Young’s neck, looking down, and didn’t flinch at the press of Young’s hand on his lower back, unthreatening for once. Young wasn’t just distracted by his tactic, he’d swallowed the bait and the hook as well. Part of Rush’s mind was buzzing with triumph, with freedom, and part of him, small but heavy and pitted like an iron meteorite, was frozen over just a bit harder and thicker, the part Gloria had hated that he’d locked away from her in her sickness. He set his jaw and was glad that Destiny never spoke to him outside of the bridge.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah, can you imagine how much _more_ fucked up "Trial and Error" and "The Greater Good" would be if Rush had pulled this? What an asshole. I have thought many thoughts over the years about Rush kissing Young to distract him from finding out about the bridge, and lo, in the face of literally pounds of schoolwork, I have written it.


	5. Hindbrain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is what I get when I try to write your good old-fashioned sex pollen story. (No sex). Young/Rush, kinda, if you squint. Hard.

            This planet is reminiscent of a middle American plain: the stargate stands on a high, shallow-sided hill covered with brown bracken and ragged grey-green flowers. The sky is grey and to where the compass indicates is northwest, black heavy clouds gather over more treeless hills. It feels like Wyoming in summer to Young. He takes in a deep breath, nudges at a round dandelion-like flower with his boot. There is a cold, brisk wind. Ahead of him, Rush’s hair blows crazily as he stalks off down the hill, Eli and Greer skidding after him. James and one of the former Lucians are looking up at the vast sky.

 

            “I wonder if we can find water here,” Varro says from behind him. The man has his head up and his nostrils flared. “It smells like it.”

 

            “My guess is it’s rained recently,” Young says, nodding at the sky. “If there were deep areas that collected water or streams, we should see trees. Unless the winter is very bitter. But I don’t think this is tundra.”

 

            “Hmm,” Varro says. “Then why drop out?”

 

            Young doesn’t answer: Destiny drops out or doesn’t at planets with stargates, and whether the planets afford them anything useful is unpredictable. He heads downhill after Rush, Eli, and Greer.

 

            “Anything interesting?” he asks.

 

            “Do you see anything interesting, Colonel?” Rush sounds agitated.

 

            “A nice landscape,” he says mildly, pushing down annoyance. He’s sort of learning that Rush is just a confrontational type of guy, the type who sees everyone as a challenge or threat. It just takes an excruciatingly long time to get him to consistently mellow out. And planets make him jumpy.

 

            “Hah,” Rush snorts out a harsh breath. “Sure, if you like a lot of grass and gorse and not much else.”

 

            “Is that the Scottish version of sagebrush?” Young breaks off a twig cautiously. No thorns. Its grey-green leaves are wetter and larger than the plant he’s familiar with, but the sharp smell is homely. There’s a tinge of something earthy and spicy underneath the camphor burn in this, though.

 

            “If it has a smell, you shouldn’t inhale,” Eli says. “Basic rule of chemistry.”

 

            “Very sharp,” Young shrugs and pulls out his radio. “TJ, there’s a plant over here with a lot of aromatics, you might want to take samples.”

 

            Park joins Rush, coming down the hill nimbly enough with her sticks and Greer shadowing her. They start picking at the dirt with trowels, Park running her fingers over it while Rush describes colors to her. Young moves on to follow Eli, who is wandering while peering at the earth.

 

            “Something must live here, right? Some animal. I can’t imagine all these complicated plants without animals.”

 

            Young doesn’t know enough about biology or evolution to try to comment. He can’t really apply truths on Earth to here, either.

 

            “Keep an eye out,” he says, and goes to climb another hill, just for the sake of the strain in his legs and to get a view of the land. It is beautiful to his eyes at least, and the air is invigorating.

 

            They leave with a few bags of dirt and plants, not having seen any animals but faint dark bird-like shapes in the sky. Young was tempted to investigate, for the sake of poultry, but there was no knowing how big or far they were.

 

            Destiny is dim as always when they return, the smell of recycled air stale and scratchy after the clean wind of the planet. Young’s heart is still racing, on high alert, and somehow the return to normalcy doesn’t calm him. He drinks more water than usual, takes his pulse, and frowns. His fingertips feel a little numb and clumsy; it’s making it hard to count his heartbeats.

 

            He should go see TJ, let her check for a fever. He leaves his quarters and paperwork, and heads in the direction of the control interface room, in case Rush, Eli or Park are having symptoms. The only person there is Rush, and Young’s heartrate ticks up at the sight of him. His hair is still windblown and disheveled.

 

            “Rush,” he says, walking close to him. Rush looks over.

 

            “Colonel Young,” he says, pleasantly enough. “What can I do for you?” He’s distracted, already focused back on his computer work. Young feels a spike of anger and forces it down. He really wants all of Rush’s attention, but he doesn’t need it.

 

            “Are you feeling any symptoms since we got back from the planet?” he asks. Rush runs a hand through his hair.

 

            “Symptoms like what?”

 

            “Increased heartrate or localized numbness, for example!” Young barks out, way too loudly. Rush jerks back, and in a flash Young has his fist in the scientist’s shirt, reacting faster than conscious thought.

 

            “Symptoms like increased anger and aggression, maybe?” Rush says slowly. The calm, soothing tone of his voice feels like a cocktail of condescension and fear, and Young doesn’t care for either. Well, maybe he cares for the fear. He can practically smell it on Rush, and he wants to bare his teeth.

 

            Something lets him not, and he tries to think as Rush goes still in his grip. But thought is lost in the evolving threat in Rush’s dark eyes. Rush is meeting his eyes now, with a sharp challenge. The urge to sink his teeth into Rush’s throat is changing: the other man has stiffened, straightened, and transformed from prey to challenger.

 

            “I’m going to take your pulse,” Rush says, and Young smacks away the hand Rush telegraphs toward his throat. “Okay, never mind.” Hot, nervous fingers wrap around Young’s wrist, not pressing in to free Rush from the grip Young has on him. “Right, that’s definitely not normal.”

 

            Young growls in the back of his throat as Rush looks away and looks around.

 

            “Can you speak?” Rush asks, and tugs at his wrist.

 

            Young does not like the challenge to his hold, though he kind of loves it. He walks Rush backward, slams him hard into the wall. He bares his teeth, gets in Rush’s face, crowds him until he looks down.

 

            “Sssssth,” he lisps out, tongue heavy in his mouth. He inhales against Rush’s hair, still itching to strike out, bite down, grip and crush. There’s confusion: he can’t tell whether Rush is an enemy to be neutralized or an ally he wants to lean on and nuzzle into. He bites down, not lightly, on the sharp edge of Rush’s jaw.

 

            “Colonel, stop it!” Rush’s hand grips under his jaw and Young releases him, grabs his hand and holds it still. “Fuck.” He feels Rush’s chest rise and fall slowly, feels his breath release shakily. “You are sick. You need to let me go.”

 

            Young bites him again, but his face and mouth aren’t made to bite and hold, and Rush jerks to the side with a shout, ducking down and kicking him hard in the balls. He cries out and winces back for a moment, and gets Rush’s radio smashed into the side of his head. He overcorrects as he straightens, wavers, heat rushing through him and his heart hammering so hard he can hear it. A sharp pain shoots through the muscles of his left arm, and his vision blacks out before he feels himself hit the floor.

 

            He wakes up to the brighter-than-the-rest-of-Destiny lights of the infirmary. There’s an aching feeling in his chest and his balls. Oh, right. Rush kicked him, and he deserved it.

 

            “Colonel Young?” TJ’s voice comes from nearby.

 

            “Yeah?” he says. His mouth is dry, and he turns his head to see TJ looking concerned for him, but keeping her distance.

 

            “How do you feel?”

 

            “Thirsty. Kind of achy. How badly did I hurt Rush?” Young licks his lips, worried. He can taste blood, but he probably hit the ground with his face, too.

 

            “Some stitches and disinfectant,” Rush’s voice responds. “It wasn’t quite a horror movie.”

 

            “Sorry about that,” Young says, feeling mortified. “I could have really hurt you.”

 

            “Yes, I know.” Rush sounds much frostier, now. Young supposes he does know, and says nothing else.

 

            “I ran the oil from that plant through the HPLC, and there were several biologically active compounds in it,” says TJ. “Including something that severely inhibited your reasoning, something that accelerated your heartrate, something that spiked your testosterone, something that activated all the reptilian parts of your brain.”

 

            “Yeah, I felt kind of…animalistic, in hindsight,” Young says. “Though I wasn’t angry until I saw Rush. I was going to the CI room to check if he or Eli or Park were feeling sick, too.”

 

            There’s a soft, sour laugh from where Rush is, out of Young’s line of sight.

 

            “It’s possible seeing another person triggered some aggression response,” TJ concedes. “I’m not about to conduct trials on the crew, but something similar happened to SG-1.”

 

            “Well, it’s good to know there’s really nothing new under the sun, or at least under the stargate,” Young says, and starts to sit up. He is stopped. “Can I be unlocked from the bed?”

 

            “Yes, but you have to stay here under observation for a few hours. You passed out because your heart couldn’t beat fast enough for the stimulants in your body. That’s a lot of strain.”

 

            At TJ’s words, Rush moves into his field of vision, a white bandage taped onto his jaw. He looks pensive and unafraid. Young has a burst of fear that the aggression is going to come back, but there’s nothing. TJ unlocks the manacle around his right wrist. He peers at the fingers that had felt numb: they are feeling fine now, but he can see the residue of the oil on his hands.

 

            “I guess it went in through the skin,” he says, indicating the area. “It felt numb, earlier.”

 

            TJ swabs the area, then wipes it off with ethanol until Young is sure he’s been dried out down to the bone. Rush stands over him for a moment, arms folded, then leaves without a word. In the wake of him, there’s a sharp, musty odor that Young may be imagining, but his heart picks up for a brief moment, his hands itch with hunger, and the tension behind his teeth fills with the desire to get around Rush again. It fades after a moment, but he is clear-headed the whole time, and the ache in his hands doesn’t fully fade.

 

            He lies back down and closes his eyes, breathes in deeply, and waits to metabolize the last of his sickness.


	6. Wedding

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> PROMPT: “you invited me to your brother’s/sister’s wedding as a plus one bc we’re hella best friends but we end up making out at the afterparty and now everyone thinks we’re fucking so uh,, u wanna go out for a drink sometime? try this whole couple thing out?” au
> 
> Modified to be more depressing, and happen in the mid 80s. Young/Telford

Weddings in Middle America were about as exciting as David had expected. As Everett’s closest friend, (possibly his only friend) however, he was not complaining. He was having a glass of free wine with his free dinner, and enduring a continuous strafing of relatives’ comments. They all seemed either to be lamenting that Everett hadn’t been married yet, celebrating that he hadn’t died in war, or enquiring after people David didn’t know. A few great-aunts had patted him on the arm and said things along the line of how nice it was for Everett to bring his handsome Air Force friend to his brother’s wedding, and introduce him to his sisters and cousins.

David was not sorry to have an excuse to dance with Everett’s female relatives, who tended towards dark curly hair, Mediterranean skin, and generous curves. Harsh features on Everett were mellowed out with long hair and a touch of makeup. Everett, not a dancer by any stretch, especially not for his sisters, stayed firmly planted at the table, earnestly answering questions from old men.

The evening wore on, and the elders of the Young family decamped for guest bedrooms and the town’s motel. The wedding party, with an inevitability that was a little surprising to David, considering the teetotal tendencies of small towns, moved from the community center ballroom to the bar a few blocks into downtown. The bride had conceded to change from her white, long-trained dress into a different dress, but someone had put the veil back in her hair. This resulted in a few free beers, and discounts for the wedding guests. The locals, mostly farmers halfway into their cups, gestured in goodwill and bought more drinks.

So David was fairly buzzed by the time he decided to kiss one of Everett’s relatives. Her name was Diane, she was clearly related to Everett, and he didn’t really want to know if she was his sister or his cousin. He had been shooting nervous looks Everett’s way half the night, but apparently he wasn’t the aggressively protective male relative type. Either that, or he trusted David. David knew himself well enough to judge that a mistake, but it was sort of touching.

Diane was insistent on getting up to dance to one of the country songs playing on the jukebox, and David twirled her around a few times, beer in one hand. He would have been happy to go back into a shadowy corner and continue acquainting himself with her, but Everett sort of tipped him into a chair and fixed him with a mild smile.

“You should have some water,” he said. David took a glass from him and drank it obligingly, not too drunk to argue or ignore him. He loosened his tie further: now that he was still, he noticed that the bar was pretty hot. “You’ve got some—“ Everett gestured at his own neck. David didn’t need a mirror to guess that he had lipstick smudges on his neck. He finished his beer and looked around without intent, feeling drunkenness rock into him like wind settling into a kite. Everett was still watching him with his quiet, dark eyes. His mouth was as full as Diane’s, dark against his skin in the dingy light.

“Who knew your hair would be curly if you let it grow out,” David joked, turning his empty glass around in his hand.

“You didn’t see me letting any of those old ladies show you photographs, did you?” Everett retorted, smiling back. He seemed to have gotten over Diane, or whatever had made him pull David out to sit down.

“They would never spoil your spit-and-polished Air Force image,” David protested, and brought their glasses back to the bar. Everett’s brother and his bride were being serenaded out the door of the bar, showered in some half-hearted tosses of bar peanuts. The bridesmaids were going with them, and with them apparently all the girls, including Diane. David ditched a few lingering hopes—sure, he was sharing a motel room with Everett, but they had a rental car, and he always had three or four backup plans running in the background.

“Do you want another drink?” he asked over his shoulder, but Everett shook his head.

“We’re closing soon,” the bartender said, narrowing his eyes mistrustfully. David shrugged it off and followed Everett out the door, pulling his suit jacket back on.

“So this is where you grew up,” he said, in case Everett wanted to say something. As usual, he didn’t, and they walked back towards the motel together, shoulders brushing.

“Here, Don Juan,” Everett said, elbowing him as they passed a darkened diner and its parking lot. “This is where all the cool kids used to drive to and kiss after school.”

David snorted.

“Brings back memories?”

“In what scenario was I the cool kid in school?” Everett laughed, brushing back his buzzed-off hair in some reflexive gesture summoned up by his hometown. David, caught by something warm and fluid as wax in his abdomen, reached forward and took Everett by the arm. There was no parked car to lean on but he settled for grabbing Everett by the back of the neck and kissing him hard. Tipsy as he was, there was no room for grace, just an impolite invasion of tongue and greed. Everett kissed back, no hesitation, and David smoothed his hands upward, greedy for long hair that wasn’t there. The close, slick heat of the kiss broke and crested again, Everett’s hands hovering at his elbows as his lips moved over David’s.

David pulled away, feeling too visible, too close to the streetlights. He rested his forehead against Everett’s and adjusted his jacket, looking helplessly at his lips.

“You know we—“ Everett was clearing roughness from his voice. He stepped back, straightening.

“I know,” David said, immediately. It wasn’t worth it, it never could be. You heard little rumors of it: there were always a few fools who thought they could do it. Not the kind with ambition, that flew combat and made it up the chain. “Let’s just head back to the motel.”

“Yeah,” Everett said, and they walked through the dark streets like nothing was different, even though there was a certain ache in David’s chest.


End file.
